


the way a breeze goes

by Senri



Category: Mugen no Juunin | Blade of the Immortal
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senri/pseuds/Senri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small Rin vignette set at the very end of the series.  "That was just the way it went."  Spoilers for ch217/218.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way a breeze goes

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 217 of Blade of the Immortal made me miserable. This was written in response. Now I feel like I understand the ending better, even if I don't like it more.

In the end she made it a fast blow because she knew, if it dragged out, she wouldn't be able to finish a slow one. His smile as she charged spoke that she'd made a good decision. That became her bitter comfort later: she'd thought, with the woman dead and one arm gone, he had very little, and maybe he'd agreed.

Castration might have worked except she'd been determined he'd have no more children and that hadn't been the sure way. He hadn't got her in the normal method, after all, but he'd been right to call her his child regardless. It was a fight neither he nor she had picked but one they'd been embroiled in anyway. Rin could have seen another world for both of them, maybe, but that choice had been taken out of their hands decades before they were born.

It was a sadder ending than she ever expected, and an easier return to a quiet life the very same way. She could sit before her father's grave now knowing that her mother was there in spirit if not in interred remains and feel relaxed, knowing neither of them wondered what she was on about, letting them go unavenged. She could pray for them aloud and say a few words in the privacy of her own head to Anotsu, half-sour, half-amused, never quite soft. _Well, sorry, anyway, but what did you expect to happen? You live by the sword, you die by it_. His ghost was a quiet one. It presumed to give her the same smile he gave her at the moment of his death and say _I know, I know. I can't say it came as so much a surprise._

In the end he was safely dead. For sure, the afterlife was the only place an ambitious bastard like Anotsu Kagehisa would be safe to have around, or secure himself. And she was still alive, enough to remember, too. She would think of him, not think of him, think of him again, and that was the end of it.


End file.
